Crossbones Read online

  His heartbeat quickening, he sends a one-word text message informing his minder that he is at the back gate, and he receives a reply encouraging him to gain entry right away. He opens the carryall and takes out a light machine gun and a belt strung with bullets. He slings the collapsible gun over his shoulder, girdles the belt around his waist, and throws the carryall over a low part of the fence, then waits a few minutes.

  YoungThing wishes himself good luck. As light-footed as a young dik-dik, he runs at the fence and shinnies up and over. He drops down on the other side with a quiet thud and remains in a crouch for a few seconds, his gun poised the way he has seen it done in movies.

  An untended garden stretches before him, the shrubs low and scraggly, the trees stunted, and the wall of the house crawling with vines. He moves stealthily forward, as silent as the leopards in stories he has heard. He is certain his instructors at the madrassa would be pleased with him, assured that his training has turned him into a cadet ready to martyr himself in the service of the insurgency. He pauses for a startled fraction of a second when he picks out the sound of movement somewhere nearby. With purposeful speed, he retrieves the carryall and stands firm and unafraid behind the low shrubs—there are benefits to being of small size, after all, he thinks. But now he comes upon a shorter fence, of which no one has spoken. It goes to show, he tells himself, that even Shabaab’s intelligence gatherers are fallible. Still, he doesn’t look back, thinking that is the way of doom. Besides, there is no place for fear in a martyr. He’ll use the gun, shoot and kill, if there is need.

  He backs up three paces, breathing in and out quickly until he feels a burning sensation in his lungs. Having omitted mention of the second fence, the men may have missed something of a trickier nature; he must be ready for all eventualities. Unless, of course, the omission was deliberate, meant to test his mettle. His minder has impressed on him the importance of using his weapon only when it is imperative or in self-defense, and of using the silencer if he does have to shoot.

  One nervous move follows another. He throws the carryall over the fence. He waits for a few minutes, then runs at it, vaults over, and, landing, gathers himself into a tight ball—he’s learned this from watching videos on a jihadi website. In one video, the instructors encouraged young jihadis to retain the scalps of high-profile targets as trophies. YoungThing is uncertain that he will ever want to hang on to the head of a man he has killed. In fact, there is no chance in hell that he will want to do so, and in any case, he has no place to conceal a dead head; he has no home he can call his own.

  Now he happens upon a second discrepancy in the directives given to him: he finds a half-open window, but it appears to lead not into a bathroom, as he was told, but into what looks like a kitchen.

  He hides behind a huge tree with a trunk as big as a baobab’s. He is still as a worshipper waiting for the imam to resume his prostrations. Then, committing himself fully to every move he makes, like a jihadi leading the onslaught on the enemy from the front, he gains the back porch in two swift, long strides.

  He scans the area for evidence of habitation: the telltale presence of a wicker chair someone has brought out to sit in; a cat curled up in purring slumber; clothes drying on a washing line.

  He enters the property by the kitchen window, squeezing himself through. Of course, no instructions can prepare one for every contingency. There are decisions one must make on the job, without help. As far as he can tell, all is quiet inside. He walks about the house a little, feeling triumphant, then comes out to retrieve the carryall and take it back indoors. He makes a phone call to tell his minder that he is in the house and that it is safe.

  His minder asks him to describe the outside of the house he has “consecrated.” In fact, he asks him several times to repeat how he got there. At first, YoungThing puts this down to a bad telephone connection. Then he begins to doubt whether he has gone to the right property.

  He ends the call and embarks on a thorough reconnoitering, something he should have done first. He walks up the stairs and goes into the bedrooms. The rooms feel lived in: drawers ajar from recent use, socks black with dirt, a pair of underpants still damp from wear. He is in the wrong house, he thinks again. But what can he do about it?

  The refrigerator in the kitchen is buzzing. He opens it and, seeing plastic containers full of last night’s leftovers, he feels hungry, and angry, too. He hasn’t had his fill of meat for a long time and is tempted to stuff himself with good food; he wishes he hadn’t already made the phone call.

  He hears movements coming from the front porch. He turns and sees through the open door an ancient man, unshaven and wearing only a dressing gown and flip-flops, tottering in the direction of the house. The old man seems equally surprised to see him. But the old man mistakes YoungThing for one of his many grandchildren and says, “Why, you are back early! You see, the wind pushed the door locked, and when I couldn’t get back in, I fell asleep on the bench under the tree in the front garden.”

  JEEBLEH WALKS GROGGILY OUT OF THE FOKKER AIRCRAFT, JUST arrived in Mogadiscio from Nairobi, and down the wobbly steps pushed against its flank by a gaggle of youths who look like a prison work detail. As he descends, billows of dust mixed with the midday heat and humidity whip up at him in agitated vigor, the sea breeze from a mere half kilometer away hardly affecting the gooeyness of the amalgam. In addition, an irritating scrimmage of human traffic crowds the bottom of the stairway as porters squeeze through the descending passengers to offer their services.

  Jeebleh is visiting Mogadiscio for the first time in a decade. His son-in-law, Malik, a freelance journalist based in New York, has come along, too, intending to write articles about the ancestral land he has never seen. Now, watching half a dozen bearded men in white robes with whips in their hands, Malik looks disturbed. Born in Aden, Yemen, of a Somali father and a Malay-Chinese mother, Malik was brought up partly in Malaysia, a most orderly country. He learned Somali as a child but has not spoken it continuously, and because of this, his hearing cannot accommodate the alien harshness of these bearded men’s inflections as they bark instructions at passengers and porters alike. Jeebleh remembers his wife’s refrain about Somalia: “That unfortunate country, cursed with those dreadful clanspeople, forever killing one another and everyone around them.” Yet it is Judith, prone as she is to speaking out of turn and making embarrassing gaffes, who suggested that Jeebleh take Malik along and prevailed on their daughter, Amran, to give her consent.

  Now Jeebleh and Malik have become separated in the melee, as the passengers shove one another in the rush to collect their luggage or to get out of the way. Jeebleh steps aside and holds out his hand for Malik, in the manner in which one stretches out a hand to a drowning person. Malik acknowledges him with a nod and a smile, but declines to take the proffered hand, so Jeebleh inches his way through the crowd to rejoin him. “Let us head in the direction of the Immigration and Customs down there,” he shouts in English, and he points at the hall, his hand striking someone in the face, an act for which he apologizes, although the man whom he has struck does not appear at all bothered.

  A man, seemingly in authority, even though he is not in uniform—he is one of those wearing a white robe, Arab style, and a purple keffiyeh, Arafat style, but no whip—takes interest in the two of them when he hears them communicate in English. He approaches with the consummate confidence of the powerful, his hand outstretched toward Jeebleh. “Your passport, please.”

  Malik mutters conspiratorially to Jeebleh, wondering who the man is. Instead of answering the question, Jeebleh hands over his passport and then, turning to Malik, suggests that he cede his own. The man studies the passports, one at a time. When he has gleaned as much information as he can, he returns them, politely gesturing them on toward Immigration and Customs. Jeebleh’s Somali seventh sense alerts him to some trouble ahead, even if he does not know its nature. But he takes care not to share his worry with Malik.

  The terminal building is open on the side faci
ng the airstrip and the ocean, and closed on the other, exit side. The airport reopened to traffic only a couple of months earlier, for the first time in sixteen civil war years. The repair job on the hall is not quite done, the scaffolding crisscrossing and impeding one’s movements, nor is the work on the archways anywhere near complete. A rope is strung across the middle of the hall, separating arrivals and departures. In the departures area, some fifty or so cheap white plastic chairs are clustered in the corner, presumably for the use of passengers waiting to board their flights. In arrivals, a disorderly queue is forming as the first passengers scramble to clear the formalities. With no luggage carousels or carts, no trained personnel at Immigration and Customs, there is no knowing how things might pan out, no knowing what these robed, bearded men might or might not do.

  Jeebleh and Malik start their own queue; apparently they are the only arriving passengers traveling on non-Somali passports. They are linked in intention, too. Malik wants to write about the city under the Union of Islamic Courts as it prepares for war. As a freelancer, he has signed a loose contract with a daily newspaper back home that gives it first right of refusal to any piece he writes. In return, the paper has given him a small retainer, from which he paid for his ticket to Somalia. But he is aware of the dangers involved in visiting the country; and knows, too, that his accompanying Jeebleh has pleased his father-in-law and eased his wife Amran’s mind. For his part, Jeebleh intends to facilitate Malik’s mission by introducing him to his bosom friend, Bile. Jeebleh and Bile were raised in the same household, their mothers almost interchangeable. Later, they went to Padua University together, Bile to take a medical degree, Jeebleh to write his doctoral thesis on Dante. They were even together in jail back in Somalia, where as political dissidents they occupied neighboring solitary cells. But now they live thousands of miles apart, and Jeebleh has heard that Bile’s health is poor. He is eager to see his old friend, and to meet Bile’s companion, Cambara, who has insisted they act as his and Malik’s hosts in Mogadiscio. There are others to whom he can introduce his son-in-law, who will help him to adjust to his challenging surroundings.

  Yet for all his good intentions, Jeebleh’s anxiety about Malik’s well-being is taking a toll on him, as he labors to anticipate the troubles that may arise, in hopes of allaying them. It doesn’t help that Malik is already ill at ease with Jeebleh’s solicitude. Having been a foreign correspondent in the Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other of the world’s hot spots, he appears certain he needs no telling what he must or mustn’t do. Within half an hour of arriving in Somalia, the two of them are already erring on the side of reticence, neither saying what is on his mind.

  The sight of a young man in his late teens reminds Malik of his nephew, Taxliil, who has recently disappeared from Minnesota, along with other Somali-American youths. Taxliil and the missing youths have reportedly gone to Somalia as volunteers in the ranks of Shabaab fighters. Ahl, Malik’s older brother, will be coming to Somalia within a few days as well, in search of his runaway stepson. Unlike Jeebleh and Malik, Ahl will base himself in Puntland, the autonomous state notorious in the international media for its pirate hideouts. Malik remembers Jeebleh explaining that in the absence of verifiable reports in Somalia, given its statelessness, all one has to do is to circulate a kutiri-kuteen hearsay not traceable to any particular person, and you can be sure that once the word hits the street it will grow its own legs and will, in its wanderings, recruit more and more hearers, with each new hearer adding their bit to the roaming tale until it gains more speed and runs faster than truth. Now things are such that Taxliil is on the verge of being sent to Puntland, serving as a go-between from a top man in Shabaab to the pirates. Malik and Jeebleh intend to assist in tracking down Taxliil’s movements in any way they can. With Jeebleh’s extensive contacts in the city and the links Malik intends to forge with other journalists and whomever else he meets, they are confident they will find Taxliil.

  Malik’s skin is smarting from the sand now blowing from the sea, the breeze bearing more than a touch of salt; he is ceaselessly rubbing his eyes sore with the heel of his hand. The same white-robed man with the purple keffiyeh opens a window in the Customs cubicle and, after a payment of a visa fee of twenty U.S. dollars, stamps their passports, not a single word exchanged. Even so, Jeebleh’s Somali seventh sense will not settle down.

  They pick up their suitcases. Another white-robed man, this one with a single-tailed whip in his hand, asks if they have anything to declare. Jeebleh responds that they do not. The man says, “Welcome to the country,” and adds, “Godspeed.”

  As soon as they are out of the building, Jeebleh starts across the no-man’s-land of the airport grounds, giving himself the physical and mental space to calm his heightened nerves. Malik trails far behind, taking his time. No question there is a huge difference between this arrival and Jeebleh’s harrowing arrival last time, at Casillay, twenty-five kilometers to the north. He quaked to his feet then, his heart pounding with fear. Those were the days of fierce armed confrontations between the warlords StrongmanSouth and StrongmanNorth. A Green Line divided the city in unequal halves, each warlord running his half. A boy not yet in his teens had been killed before Jeebleh even left the airport, as he and his mother boarded their Nairobi-bound flight.

  Jeebleh knows that the internal wrangling of the Courts has prevented them from setting up a city administration, but there is no denying the semblance of order in the shape of the white-robed men with their riding crops or bullwhips. This time, there are no shifty men to waylay one, or unruly youths to use one for target practice, taking odds on the outcome. Even if there are no uniforms or badges, there are still activities associated with authority: men stamping passports, checking papers, holding back the spectators and those welcoming passengers. They walk past the boisterous, expectant crowd, taxi drivers waiting for fares, unemployed men offering to carry their shoulder bags, beggars begging. Amazingly, no one in this rowdy lot dares to step beyond the cord meant to keep them out, over which a man in a robe stands guard with a whip. Then Jeebleh spots Dajaal, who is waving, and he relaxes. His friend is an old pro who has lived through good and bad times in this city. Jeebleh met him during his 1996 visit and knows him to be brave, reliable, meticulous, and, above all, punctual.

  Jeebleh hugs Dajaal warmly, and introduces him to Malik as “the man you want on your side when the chips are down.” He introduces Malik as “my son-in-law, father to my only granddaughter.”

  Dajaal has with him a gawky, toothy young man with a long neck, whom he presents as Gumaad, a journalist. Jeebleh remembers the name, and how Dajaal characterized him on the phone as a “homegrown religionist-leaning fellow.”

  A crowd gathers around them, looking on curiously. In Somalia, crowds form quickly, maybe because people are hungry in many ways: hungry for news, good or bad; hungry and also hopeful that they may gain by standing close to where something is happening, to where two people are talking. But crowds change into mobs at the sound of a clarion call. Jeebleh recalls a couple of hair-raising incidents from his last visit.

  As they walk toward the car, Dajaal says to Malik, “Gumaad will serve as your escort, your guide, and your researcher. God knows you will need someone with a handle on local politics, which is a minefield for a novice.”

  Even if Dajaal had not said anything in advance, Gumaad’s accent would be a dead giveaway to Jeebleh. He hails from the same part of the country’s central region as do Dajaal, Bile, and StrongmanSouth, as well as the man known among the in-crowd of the Courts simply as TheSheikh, the current ideologue and firebrand of the religionists. Jeebleh has often contended that you can trace all of Somalia’s political instability over the past twenty years to this very district. Feisty and belligerent, its natives have between them contributed several of Somalia’s most obdurate warlords, deadliest head pirates, and wealthiest businessmen, each in their way sworn to making the country ungovernable.

  Jeebleh takes Dajaal aside and asks, “How well do
you know Gumaad?”

  “How well can you know anyone these days,” Dajaal observes.

  “Would you trust him? That’s my question.”

  “I would string him from the rafters if he misbehaves toward you or Malik.”

  Jeebleh doesn’t pursue the topic of trust, whether one can know another person in Somalia in these times. He knows that Dajaal means what he says.

  Gumaad, finding himself alone with Malik, meanwhile, dispenses with formalities. “Be warned, I have strong views, and they are different from Dajaal’s.”

  “I see nothing wrong with that,” Malik says easily.

  They get into the sedan, Jeebleh sitting up front with Dajaal, Gumaad and Malik in the back. Dajaal starts the engine but does not move, insisting that everyone put on his seat belt. Gumaad grumbles that “belting up” is un-Islamic; accidents happen and deaths occur when Allah wills them. “When will you accept that nothing happens without His express decision?”

  “In my car, we wear seat belts,” says Dajaal.

  Even after he buckles up and Dajaal puts the car in motion, Gumaad doesn’t let it go. “Listen to you. ‘In my car, we wear seat belts.’ This is Bile’s car, not yours. So you can’t say ‘my car.’” A jet of his saliva strikes Malik in the face, and he wipes it away discreetly. Jeebleh, amused, shakes his head at this pointless altercation, looking from Dajaal to Gumaad. What relevance does the ownership of a vehicle have to do with wearing or not wearing seat belts? But Somalis, he knows, seldom admit to red herrings. It is typical of them to confound issues, mistake a metonym for a synecdoche. While there is always a beginning to an argument, there is never an end, never a logical conclusion to their disputation. Somalis are in a rich form when holding forth; they are in their element when they are spilling blood.